


there's nothing you can say to him (he is an outer heart)

by fullmotionvideo



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Campfires, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Post-Wonderland, but pre-Lunar Interlude V
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 08:50:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10533021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmotionvideo/pseuds/fullmotionvideo
Summary: “Yeah, so, I should probably sleep, but I can’t.”“Me too,” Taako says.“No, I mean, like, I actually can’t sleep. Physically can’t. I don’t have organs, I don’t have a brain. I can’t close eyes if I don’t have them.”





	

For the duration of his stint with Magnus and Merle, there has never been a time where Taako has been messy. Well, hold on. Nuanced phrasing, he thinks, and corrects himself.

Taako has been so drunk with Magnus that he couldn't see straight, calling Lucretia on their stones of far speech and giggling incessantly despite her scoldings. He's been so stoned in Merle's company that they had attempted an all out kitchen raid, the pair of them picking up a trail of dropped cans of tuna and cookie packages as they ran from the kitchens. Those are undeniable facts of life, little instances of disarray that he’s comfortable with being out in the open air.

So… perhaps a more accurate statement is that for the duration of his stint with Magnus and Merle, there has never been a time where Taako has been _visually_ messy.

Except for now. He is messy all the time now.

He looks at his face in Barry’s mirror, smushing his cheeks in his palms, tugging on the skin under his eyes, opening his eyes narrower and wider. He notices so many things about himself that were different from before. That tended to happen to people who checked their hair in every mirror they passed, who watched themselves walk in every window reflection, who spent hours hunched over a makeup mirror in a towel, hair tucked up and out of sight while it dries. It was happening now, for example. It’s… Taako has done a lot of thinking about this in the time they’ve been in Barry’s little shithole cave.

It’s not like he’s _ugly_ or anything. He’s just… plain. Pretty, not beautiful. (And what else is there, other than to be beautiful?) Taako used to pride himself in his appearance more than anything in the world; after his cooking prowess had failed him (or so he had thought--the events as they _actually_ played out were still a tender sequence), it was all he had. Sazed had left and taken their cart and some of Taako’s heart but he still couldn’t change the fact that Taako was gorgeous. _Was_ gorgeous. Now he’s pretty.

He feels a little selfish about thinking like this. He is, arguably, the one to come out of Wonderland with the least permanent damage. He’s hurt badly, sure, but in comparison to the other two, he’s a brief trip to a nurse. Merle is a hugger with no arm. He’s a dwarf with no dark vision. He’s a cleric with no god. Magnus had to be ripped out of the astral plane to survive, and he’d lost his motivation to carry on along with his body. His body.

Magnus, who loves dogs so much he cries, who carries Carey and Angus and even Killian sometimes on his shoulders when he was celebrating anything from budding romance between his friends to a good day of training, who had approached him across a bar and shouted his name with a wobbly drunk grin plastered across his face, is gone. He’s a limp-dick expressionless wooden fucking mannequin. A shambling corpse. A shell of what he was before. And _he_ was trying to make _Taako_ feel better back in Wonderland, and on the walk here, as though Taako had any right to be upset at all.

(It wasn’t really helping, and Taako was absolutely upset. He still is, actually, and--)

“Hey,” Magnus says, except he doesn’t say anything, because he’s a mannequin with no mouth, but he interrupts Taako's thoughts anyway. He puts his hand on Taako’s shoulder, and it’s so unfamiliar paired with a voice that _was_ that Taako can’t help but flinch.

Magnus pulls away. Thankfully, Taako catches his (cold, lifeless, wooden) hand before he can fully retract it, and he looks over at the mannequin apologetically. “Hey,” he replies, droopy eyes flickering across where Magnus’ eyes should be, where his lopsided nose would be, where his soft sympathetic expression would make Taako feel ten times better. It isn’t there. Taako feels worse, somehow. “What’s up, buttercup?”

A little ‘heh’ sound escapes the mannequin’s general area, and Magnus, from inside it, shrugs. “Just wanted to try and get you out of your head, I guess.” He’s speaking softly, leaning in closer. It’s unnerving, but it’s so Magnus that Taako can’t help but let him do it. “Merle’s asleep. Just got him to bed.” He would be grinning, winking maybe.

“Is he our baby now, Maggie?” Taako smirks, realizing in that moment he’s still holding Magnus’ hand. He drops it, and it hangs there, just like it always does when he touches Magnus’ hand, and he takes it again out of habit. It only halfway doesn’t feel right.

“Yeah, he is, Taak.” Magnus’ voice is soft. Taako wishes he could see his friend’s expression, to search those stupid eyes and nose and mouth and muscle patterns for what he means by that soft voice. He’s a lot harder to read now, Taako thinks. He used to wear his heart on his face. Now he doesn’t have one.

“We should go outside, then. Talk, or whatever. The fire’s probably still got some flames, and if we run out of logs, we can always gut your new bod for some parts.”

Magnus laughs, and after Taako unloads his bags from his shoulders (which he’d meant to do four hours ago instead of staring at his reflection), they leave the cave together and head into the dim firelight. Barry has apparently gone to bed, too, because now it’s just Taako and Magnus left to stoke the fire. Taako takes the hint when Magnus hesitates one wooden hand over the flames, prodding at it with his mage hand and yawning.

“Yeah, so, I should probably sleep, but I can’t.”

“Me too,” Taako says.

“No, I mean, like, I _actually_ can’t sleep. Physically can’t. I don’t have organs, I don’t have a brain. I can’t close eyes if I don’t have them.”

Damn. That sucks. Taako hums, scooting a little closer to the fire and biting the inside of his cheek. Selfish, selfish, thinking being pretty is worse than being a fucking wooden block and not even being able to escape from it. At least Taako can meditate. At least Merle can dream. Magnus’ mannequin body scoots a little closer to him, and Taako lets him because his heart is sunk to his ass on the cold wet ground and he’s feeling like shit.

Magnus sighs. Taako just wishes he could feel the breath. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” he says, and he wraps an arm around Taako’s shoulders. Taako leans his full weight onto Magnus, who has to steady himself with a hand dug into the ground, and that sucks, and Taako feels worse. Magnus is trying, he reminds himself, and takes a few deep breaths. “I just… uh. I don’t know. I miss stuff I took for granted when I had a body.”

Taako nods against his shoulder. “Like what?”

Magnus shrugs the shoulder not being held down by Taako’s head. He looks around. “I can’t feel the fire. I technically shouldn’t be able to hear it crackle, but I know I can’t feel it for certain. I can’t feel the dew on the ground. I can’t feel your hand in mine, even though it’s been here this whole time we’ve been sitting.” Ouch. Taako’s heart does a weird thing. He’s not gonna analyze it. “I know it’s windy, but I can’t feel it, either. I’m not happy, or sad, or angry, at least not the way I used to be. I know what those emotions are, and I can use body language to… show you, I guess? But I don’t feel them.”

“I’ll stay up with you, if you want.” He means it; he knows Magnus is going to protest, to protect, and he knows that he needs the long rest and a chance to regain his strength, but he wants to be here for Magnus. Magnus was there for him all the time. Hell, even in a fucking wooden puppet he’s here for Taako.

Magnus’ thumb strokes across the top of his hand, and Taako can tell it’s for his benefit more than Magnus’. Damn him. Damn him and his stupid big heart, and his knowing how to make Taako feel better. Damn Taako’s socially inept upbringing. “Nah,” he says, and even though he can’t see the fake smile Magnus is wearing in the ethereal plane, he knows it’s bullshit. Magnus needs someone to sit with him and just… be there. Magnus almost died. Magnus had been dy _ing_. He needed Taako. Or, like, maybe Taako needed him. Needed to know he was as close to alive as they could manage right now, in case Taako had to jump right back into the ethereal plane and save him.

He doesn’t think about how they’d only survived because Merle had pulled them back. He’d go after Magnus even if Merle wasn’t here right now, or conscious enough to save them from dying in whatever inky darkness has pulled Kravitz under the waves in the astral plane.

It’s a monumental thought, and he promptly ignores it.

“I’m gonna do it anyway, bubeleh. You know that.” He pats Magnus’ arm. “I’m here for you. Taako’s got your back.”

“Yeah,” Magnus says, and he leans his head on Taako’s. “I know. You too.” For a moment, Taako can almost feel him there, with his big warm hand wrapped around Taako’s, and his sideburns tickling Taako’s scalp. They’re somewhere different, now, somehow, but it isn’t alarming. Taako is wearing different clothes, and they’re by a different fire. Two moons are out on the horizon against their fire, but Taako can’t look away from their hands touching.

It’s confusing, and when Magnus speaks again, his words are static. And then everything is static. And then he opens his eyes, and it’s daytime, and he’s outside Barry’s cave on the ground tucked halfway into his sleeping bag, and Magnus the mannequin is bustling around their dead firepit. He feels like he has a hangover, if you could feel a hangover all over your body and hangovers left bruises and scrapes.

Magnus hasn’t noticed him yet; he could go back to sleep and pretend he’s sitting by a million fires with a million different versions of Magnus. He doesn’t. He sits up and stretches his arms across his chest and scratches at his neck. “Hey, Pinocchio,” he half-yawns. “What’s good?”

“Just getting stuff packed up.” Magnus doesn’t look at him. Or maybe he does. Taako can’t tell. “Barry and Merle are awake. I told them to let you sleep until we left because of what happened to you at Wonderland.”

What happened to--what happened to _him_?! Taako feels like shouting at him, but refrains. Magnus is probably already pretty fragile mentally. Damn it, Taako can’t help but love the guy, even when he’s being stupid. He pushes that right out of his head and stretches again. “Mm, okay. You want some help?”

“That would be cool." Taako can almost feel him smile. "I can’t carry all this crap by myself anymore.”

Taako’s bones ache, and his joints crack as he stands, and he can literally see the bruises poking out of his sleeves that cover his entire body, but he carries a bag that Magnus can’t, because he’s there for him, and because he’s got Magnus’ back.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song "broken" by gorillaz! it's what i listened to while i wrote this! 
> 
> if you want to talk about TAZ or taagnus, i'm at @virtualrealitycowboy on tumblr.


End file.
